May 7 - 11Posts Are Due By Midnight On Saturday May 12th

Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark are trying to develop ways to use bioluminescence to light up cities. The luciferase enzyme, which can be found in some types of algae, produces a strong blue glow when disturbed into motion. This can be used to light up city lights, but still needs a lot of research and innovation, as it needs to be disturbed into motion to shine.

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Poonam S

5/7/2018 05:20:34 pm

http://ocean.si.edu/slideshow/bioluminescent-animals-photo-gallery

This website not only provides you with pictures of animals with bioluminescent but also tells you the reason for the luminescent specific to each animal. Some use it to communicate, find their next meal or even to scare predators away. Prepare to be amazed!

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Campbell W

5/10/2018 01:44:29 pm

Li-Fi (light fidelity) is a technology for wireless communication between devices using light to transmit data. Scientists have been testing this new technology since 2011. It is just like Wi-Fi, but it uses a Visible Light Communications (VLC) system, which is 100x faster than a traditional Wi-Fi setup. Li-Fi relies on LED bulbs to transfer data embedded in its beam at rapid speeds to the receivers. The beam will contain rapid dimming and flickering (that we don’t notice) that can be converted into an electric signal by the receiver. This signal is converted back into a binary data stream such as a video, web, or audio file.

The waves by San Diego are glowing blue due the bioluminescence of dinoflagellates. Dinoflagellates are a type of algae that give off a blue light as a way of defending itself. They glow when a predator tries eat it which then attracts larger fish to eat the predator. These algae also have the nickname of the "red tide" because they give the water a red colour in the day (but then glow blue later at night).

This article is about Yuri Milner's "most audacious piece of science-focused philanthropy: Breakthrough Starshot, an attempt to send hardware to Alpha Centauri by mid-century". Alpha Centuari is the light system that's closest to our Solar System, and Yuri wants to deliver hardware there via the "light sail".

This is how the light sail is going to work. Photons carry a momentum, and by shooting many lasers at the thin sheet of whatever-reflective-surface-the-light-sail's-made-of, the push of the photons will carry the sail to another light system!

For more information and a picture that will help you understand the concept better, visit the site!

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Jessica Y

5/11/2018 09:40:35 pm

A makeup mirror almost caused a house fire for a woman in Toronto. The mirror’s concave shape is a fire hazard if placed in direct sunlight. The magnifying side is the concave mirror that will focus on the sun’s rays and cause a fire on anything combustible. This is why a concave mirror can be used to start campfires with the sun’s rays.

This week I decided to do some research on bioluminescence. The more I looked online, the more I realized how many animals are able to produce bioluminescent light. The obvious ones were fireflies and jellyfish, but I didn't know that octopus and even some mushrooms have bioluminescent light as well. I also found that this light is emitted due to chemical energy in an animal releasing the energy into a form of light. The website compares this chemical energy to the chemical energy that humans take in from food that gets turned into body heat.

https://www.livescience.com/32651-what-causes-bioluminescence-.html

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Joshua M.

5/12/2018 09:56:34 am

A new type of laser was created, and it’s more reliable and energy-efficient than conventional lasers. It’s composed of a grid of semiconductor rings that convert energy into photons which are then channelled in a single direction around the grid until they are emitted as a beam. The design is based off of an exotic class of materials known as topological insulators which are a kind of material that blocks electric current through the interior and lets electrons surf along the surface. This new laser’s design proves that the same kind of control that steer sound waves along the edges of devices that scientists engineered can be exerted over the light particles generated inside lasers. Scientists also hope to develop it for possible use in quantum communications and electronics.

The article I read is about how university students from B.C. are developing a satellite called OrcaSat that will be launched into space in 2020. Once in the atmosphere, the OrcaSat will shine a laser which has already had its total emitted light energy measured. The laser's energy will then be measured as it is seen from the earth and then scientists will be able to calculate how much light energy is lost in the earth's atmosphere. The team creating the OrcaSat are hoping that what they learn will improve the accuracy of telescopes.
(http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/students-shed-new-light-with-box-bound-for-space-1.23292412)

This website gives many cool facts about light. Some of the ones that I found interesting are:
-When seen from space, the sun is white because it's light isn't scattered by our atmosphere
-From Venus, you wouldn't be able to see the sun at all because the atmosphere is too thick.
-humans are bioluminescent but our glow is 1000 times weaker than our eye can register
-sunlight can reach a depth of 80 meters in the ocean
- in a double rainbow, light is reflected twice inside each water droplet and the colours in the rainbow appear in reversed order
-some animals can see light that humans cannot; bees can see UV light and pit vipers can see infared

This comic shows Darth Vader commenting on Luke's new 'energy efficient' light saber. The light saber is made of a fluorescent light. This relates to this weeks topic of light because fluorescent light is one of the types of light we learned about in class and it is, like the comic says, more efficient than some other types of light.

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Mohammed E

5/12/2018 07:22:51 pm

I've found some interesting facts about light that I would like to share:

-Plants are green because they actually reflect green light and absorb the other colours for photosynthesis. If you put a plant under a green light, it will probably die.

-Humans are bioluminescent from metabolic reactions, but our glow is 1000 times weaker than the naked eye can register.

-The sun is actually white when seen from space, because its light is not scattered by our atmosphere.

-Some animals can see light that us humans can't. Bees can see ultraviolet light, while pit vipers can see infrared light.

https://www.pinterest.com/spiedigitallib/optics-photonics/
https://www.ducksters.com/science/physics/photons.php
In this picture, it says "A photon checks into a hotel and is asked if he needs any help with his luggage" and is replied by "No thanks, I'm travelling light." The picture represents a characteristic of light, that light is made up of photons. Photons are a bundle of electromagnetic energy and the basic unit of nature called an elementary particle. An elementary particle is not made up of any smaller particles, making it a building block of the universe.

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Timothy I.

5/12/2018 08:03:08 pm

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/phone-screen-light-kills-human-eye-cells/3007113.article\
This article from last year explains how the blue light from phones and televisions kills human retina cells. The article states that blue light produces reactive oxygen species (ROS), such as superoxide radicals, in retinal cells - which lead to cell death. In fact, the death rate of human retina cells doubles when exposed to blue light, compared to cells that are kept in the dark. The study advocates that screen brightness should be no brighter than what is needed to work or entertain yourself.

In this website, Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde started a project called "Gates of Light", designed to eliminate the need for street lights and to reduce light pollution. So far, we know about specular and diffuse reflection, but there's actually another type of reflection: Retro reflection is the third type of reflection designed to reflect the ray the same way it was sent. This is very beneficial for nightime driving when you need to see signs in the dark since the light from your car bounces off the sign, and reflects back to the car. They plan to incorporate reflective lighting, but also phosphorescence. They plan to use algae that glows to incorporate glowing nature into the plan.

Currently, this is all theoretical and is just a plan, but who knows? Maybe glowing infrastructure will someday replace streetlights.

Interested? Check it out here:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lauriewinkless/2018/04/11/will-glowing-infrastructure-replace-streetlights/#75f14f53451a

Different species of fish catch prey in a variety of ways, some just swim as fast as possible and chomp down on their prey, but some special fish like the angler fish have special ways to hunt. The angler fish have a protruding spine between their eyes and has a light at the tip. The angler fish uses the light to bait potential prey near the angler fish and eats it. The angler fish can even eat prey twice its size!

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Pat M.

5/12/2018 08:21:36 pm

This aticle explains how one-way mirrors work. One-way mirrors are made up of a piece of glass with a thin coating of some reflective material (silver). The silver layer is so thin that it only actually reflects about half the light back, while the other half passes through the glass. This would still allow you to see through the glass on either side; it would just appear tinted. The trick here is changing the light levels in the two rooms, which will determine which side seems see-through and which side seems reflective. If you turn off the lights on one side and make the lights on the other side very bright, the mirroring effect will appear very strongly. An easy way to get around this problem is to block out the light on the bright side with your hands. You’ll then be able to see through the one-way mirror just fine.

https://science.howstuffworks.com/question421.htm

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Sharjeel Mustafa

5/12/2018 08:42:23 pm

Citation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulCdoCfw-bY

This video is about a futuristic energy and weaponry using black holes and there property of spinning which gives it angular momentum. The aspect of this video that correlates with the topic is the light and reflection used in the process of making a bomb and energy. In theory if a large device made of mirrors can encompass a black hole. Then the black hole can act similar as a whirlpool by giving some of it angular momentum (kinetic energy) to EM radiation such as light. The waves will hit the black hole at light speed, some of it will go into the event horizon, more of it will be sped up and bounce around the mirrors speeding up each time it hits the black hole (and does not go inside of it). This can then be used to harness energy. However, if the energy is left inside it will eventually explode with roughly the force of a super nova.

I've seen this many times and I'm still stunned every time. A video posted by Inside Edition shows a news reporter checking into a room in several hotels. They wanted to see whether hotels actually change/clean their bed sheets so they sprayed this substance that can be detected under UV light. After spraying the substance, the would check in into the same hotel room from the previous night under a different name to check whether the sheets were cleaned. The hotels featured in the video proved that the sheets weren't cleaned. It's disgusting and makes me paranoid every time I go into a hotel room.

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Nithin Muthukumar

5/12/2018 09:00:37 pm

https://www.livescience.com/45979-why-does-the-moon-shine.html
this is an article that explains the moon's brightness even though it does not produce its own light. The moon may seem to produce light but all it does is reflect the sun's light and even then, it only reflects between 3 and 12 percent of the sun's light. Also, the different stages of the moon is due to the sun being exposed to only a part of the moon due to the angle it is facing. The moon is at it's brightest when it is 180 degrees away from the sun which is what we call a full moon

This link discusses the various uses for light in the field of medicine, ranging from laser therapies to new photonic therapies. I found this interesting because it really opened my eyes to a whole new use for light. It made me realize that light is a very powerful tool that can be used for more than just illuminating things.

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